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Speed boost helps quantum codes on their way

DESPITE all the talk of quantum cryptography providing us with impregnable communications, today’s systems are either too slow or not entirely secure, so that a clever eavesdropper could steal secrets. That could soon change. The fastest totally secure connection yet is now bringing commercial applications within reach.

In quantum cryptography, two parties exchange quantum particles, usually photons, whose quantum states are linked even when they are far apart, a condition known as entanglement. The properties of these particles can be used to establish a secure secret key to encode and decode messages, because any attempt to intercept the key will …